Purchasing a domain name is the first step to get your business online or to start your a blog.
But it is only after purchasing a domain name that one may start thinking - I bought a domain name now what? What should be my next step?
Well, buying a domain name is just a baby step towards building an online presence for your blog or website.
I have compiled some basic but essential steps that you must follow after buying a domain name. It will help you in creating an online presence for you and your business.
Let's get started.
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8 Amazing Things To Do After Buying A Domain Name
1. Connect Domain and Hosting
For starting a blog, you need two things - (1) a Domain Name and (2) a Web Hosting.
Just as in a physical business, you need space (a land) to construct a shop, similarly, you need space from a web hosting provider to host your website files and make your website ONLINE.
Thus, buying a web hosting plan is the first step after buying a domain name.
When you buy a hosting plan from a web host from where you had purchased your domain name, there is no extra set up needed.
Your web host automatically does all the required setup and connects your domain with the hosting.
For example, if you buy your domain name and hosting from the same web host company like A2 Hosting, then your website is configured automatically.
Let's take another case.
You bought a domain name from a domain registrar like Godaddy and a shared hosting plan from A2 Hosting.
In this case, your domain would not connect automatically with your web hosting provider, A2 Hosting.
Here, you need to complete a small step to connect these.
The first step would be to collect nameservers from your web host.
The nameservers for shared hosting at A2 Hosting are:
- ns1.a2hosting.com,
- ns2.a2hosting.com,
- ns3.a2hosting.com, and
- ns4.a2hosting.com
After noting down the nameservers, login to your domain registrar, Godaddy.
Go to the DNS setting and replace the nameserver with the nameservers obtained at A2hosting and Save it.
To see the complete step, also read our article, how to connect a domain to hosting.
That's it. Now your domain is connected with your web host.
Note: DNS propagation takes 24 hours to 48 hours to complete. So, if you see that your domain is not loading after updating the nameservers, don't be upset. Please wait for the DNS propagation to complete.
Shared hosting plans are cheaper than other hosting plans such as VPS and dedicated hosting.
So if you are starting your first blog, I would recommend you to buy the shared hosting plan from A2 Hosting. It is one of the best Bluehost alternatives.
Claim 51% discount on shared hosting plan of A2 Hosting by going through this link.
2. Setup a Domain-Specific Email Address
We often subscribe to receive newsletters from different blogs or websites.
In these newsletters, you may notice that the emails are not sent from general email address like [email protected].
Instead, you receive these emails from addresses like [email protected].
Let's see why you should opt for domain-specific email address?
3. Install WordPress On Your Blog
After setting up a domain with hosting, now its time to load WordPress into it, which is a straightforward process.
But you may ask why WordPress?
First Reason: 75 million websites or you could say 33% of all websites around the world use WordPress to manage their websites.
Second Reason: WordPress is free to install, deploy, and upgrade. It is also very user friendly.
Third Reason: Many popular websites have built their websites on WordPress. For example, techcrunch.com, huffingtonpost.com, variety.com, sonymusic.com, news.microsoft.com, and many more.
Fourth Reason: Thousands of plugins and themes power a flexible and simple interface, which reduces development costs and deployment time.
I think these reasons are enough for anyone looking to start building their website on WordPress.
4. Install WordPress Theme On Your Blog
Now the next step is to install a WordPress theme on your blog or website.
A WordPress theme is a collection of templates and stylesheets used to define the appearance and display of a WordPress powered website.
It can be easily changed, managed, and added from the WordPress Dashboard.
A good premium theme should have the following features:
- Optimized for speed and performance
- SEO optimized
- Responsive design
- Customizable
- Free and regular updates for life
- Good Support
You now may be curious to know what are those themes that contains all these essential features. I have mentioned below two themes that fit these criteria and have used myself on my own blogs.
GeneratePress and Astra Pro are two such themes that contain all the above features. These are lightweight and SEO-optimized themes that are essential to rank your blog high on search engines.
After exploring all the popular WordPress themes, I finally settled with GeneratePress for my blog technicalwall.com.
5. Install Essential WordPress Plugins On Your Blog
Now the next step is to install some essential WordPress plugins on your blog.
A plugin is a piece of software that contains a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. These functions extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress website.
It can be easily changed, managed, and added from the WordPress Dashboard.
Some essential plugins for WordPress blog or website are listed below:
- RankMath: It is the best SEO plugin. It helps you in your search engine optimization efforts.
- UpdraftPlus: It is one of the best WordPress backup plugins. It allows you to set up automatic backup schedules of your blog. If something bad happens to your blog, it will help you in restoring it.
- SocialSnap: It is the best WordPress social media sharing plugin that helps you to drive more traffic from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and many more.
- Contact Form 7: It produces a contact form page. Your users can use this form to contact you.
- WP Rocket: It helps you to clear clutters in your blog. It is the best cache plugin. Your blog always remains clean and optimized to load very fast.
- Thrive Architect: This plugin helps to enhance your website design to make it visually attractive. However, Thrive Architect is primarily known for building conversion-focused site to bring in more email subscribers and sales.
- Sucuri: This plugin keeps your website safe from hackers, malware and adware.
6. Create Social Media Profiles For Your Blog
As soon as your blog or website is set up, you should create profiles of your blog on popular social media websites.
Why? Other than search engines, social media is the other source to bring free traffic to your blog.
Social media sites that send the most traffic to blogs in general are:
Create your blog's profile on these websites and put your website link.
Adding website links in social media sites has one more advantage.
It increases your website visibility that helps in ranking your blog higher up in search engines.
Whenever you post some interesting articles or news on your blog make it a habit to also add a link to that post on these social media sites.
It will help you in drawing free traffic from these social media sites to your blog.
7. Start Adding Contents To Your Website
Before you start adding content to your blog or website, make sure that you have added some essential pages to your site.
Below I've compiled a list of essential pages that a blog must-have so that it is compliant to important terms and conditions.
You may consider adding these pages as a Best Practice that every newbie bloggers should follow.
To create a page in WordPress Dashboard, go to Pages >> Add New.
- About Page: Tell your user who you are and what can they expect from your blog or website.
- Contact Page: Add contact form 7 plugin to your contact page. It will enable your users to contact you.
- Disclaimer: Add any disclaimer to your site that you think your users must know before using your site.
- Privacy Policy: Add details regarding whether you are collecting the user's data or not and how you are going to use it. You can easily generate a privacy policy online.
- Terms and Conditions Page: Describe all the terms and conditions of your website here.
Now, that you have added the essential pages, go ahead and write some valuable articles for your intended users.
To create a post in WordPress Dashboard, go to Posts >> Add New.
Add the content and hit the publish button. That's it.
8. Have Clear Content Strategy For Your Website
Many new bloggers make one big mistake when they start any blog. They don't have any clear content strategy.
You must have a clear content strategy for your targeted audience.
Your content should address the problems of your users and provide a solution to it.
While writing contents you must set short-term (1 month) as well as long-term (1 year) goals for yourself.
Try to post an article every week. In this way, your users will get fresh content each week and they remain engaged with your blog.
By being consistent you also build your user's loyalty.
Note: Google is the biggest search engine. Most traffic to a blog comes from Google. So, make sure to submit your website to Google so that people could find your website on Google.
Also make sure before making your blog post live, to do proper on-page SEO of your post, so that it is optimized for higher ranking on Google.
Wrapping Up
In this article I have tried to answer the common question-
I bought a domain name now what?
I hope that by going through this article your confusion has been cleared. I have included 8 common but important steps that you need to implement after you buy a domain name.
If I've missed any important steps, please comment below.
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Great blog post brother, loved to read this amazing article. Anyone who don’t know what to do after buying a domain name, he/she should read this article.
I’m glad, you liked it.